A Tuscan Childhood - Tapa dura

The author describes growing up in a castle in the Tuscan countryside, amid her parents' bohemian lifestyle, between the two World Wars, detailing her encounters with the artistic world and artists, including D. H. Lawrence and Rex Whistler, the impact of World War II, and the joys of rural Italy. 12,500 first printing.

ents of the Tuscan countryside are captured in this memoir of the idyllic Bohemian life the author shared with her family in their Italian castle in the years between the two world wars.

When Kinta Beevor was five years old, her father, the painter Aubrey Waterfield, and her mother, a writer, settled their family into a castle near the Tuscan village of Aulla. It became the center of an artistic world that included D. H. Lawrence, Robert Trevelyan, and Rex Whistler. While the adults wrote and painted, Kinta and her brother explored the castle and the nearby Florentine villa of their great-aunt Janet Ross. They helped with the grape and olive harvests, accompanied the stonemason in his search for wild mushrooms, learned how to "tickle trout." They spent their summers in tents in the mountains, with shepherds and their charcoal burners. The family fled at the approach of war, which destroyed the town and damaged the castle. But Kinta would return to witness the courage and skill o